How to Download YouTube Videos

4. Go to YouTube site, click on triangle (not the 3 colored balls), and you should see a drop down:

TIP: Point Firefox downloads to a separate folder instead of the standard user download folder. Boom, now you got a video only folder!

If you see list of both mp4 and flv downloads then you are done. Download whichever one you like, probably the 720p MP4 if available, because it’s compatible with modern mobile devices. However, some YouTube videos only show flv (Flash) files, then you need the next step.

5. You’ve enabled the MP4 widget in step 3. Now you need to enable MP4 for the individual video.
5a. Click on the MP4 widget, the page should refresh. Now click the pull down triangle from step 4.

5b. If you have flash blocker installed, you need to load the video before the MP4 video download option would appear.

Note: Sometimes you need to repeat step 5 with new videos, but it’s only a few clicks. Occasionally Google / YouTube will break compatibility with the plugin. Whenever Google breaks the download plugin, the plugin is usually updated within a week or two.

How to Download YouTube Video Using Safari

You can also use Apple Safari to download YouTube videos. Just start playing the video and go to “Window” menu / Activity. Look for the largest file, typically video are in MB, while the rest of the site are in KB.

Limitations:
Downloads YouTube videos in flash, requires transcoding
Hard to find video when too many tabs are open

There might also be Safari plug-ins that do the same thing. Let us know if you know of any.